Abstract
Panoramic imaging is information-rich, low-cost, and effective. In panoramic image acquisition, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have a natural advantage that owes to their flexibility and relatively large observation ranges. Using a panoramic gimbal and a single camera may be the most common means of capturing gigapixel panoramas. In order to manage the constraints of UAV power and facilitate the use of a variety of camera lenses, an effective and flexible method for planning UAV gigapixel panorama acquisitions is required. To address this need, a panoramic image acquisition planning method is proposed in this paper. The method defines image overlaps via a ray casting procedure and then generates an acquisition plan according to the constraints of horizontal and vertical overlap thresholds. This method ensures the completeness of the panorama by maintaining the overlap between adjacent images. Two experiments, including simulated and field cases, were performed to evaluate the proposed method through comparisons with an existing panorama acquisition plan. Results showed that the proposed method can capture complete panoramas with fewer images.
Highlights
A panorama is a single wide-angle image of the environment around a camera [1]
A gigapixel panoramic image acquisition planning method for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is proposed. This method is based on a ray casting overlap constraint, which ensures panoramic stitching with sufficient overlap between images
During generation of the panoramic acquisition plan, pan and tilt angles are considered separately; the resulting plan can be executed by three-axis gimbals mounted on multirotor UAVs
Summary
A panorama is a single wide-angle image of the environment around a camera [1]. A spherical panorama fully covers the surrounding scene with a 360° horizontal and 180° vertical field of view. The payload of the multirotor platform is restricted, so most panoramic camera arrays have five or six lenses They are unable to capture gigapixel panoramas. A panoramic gimbal rotates itself to allow the camera to capture multiple images that can be stitched together as a panorama. Akin et al [26] followed this guideline and built a hemisphere panoramic camera system in which the estimated overlap was 32% All these systems successfully captured panoramas, the definition of overlap is ambiguous and the value differs. In UAV gigapixel panorama capturing, the definition and selection of the overlap must be optimal, because payload and power in UAV platforms are strictly restricted. A gigapixel panorama acquisition planning method for multirotors is proposed This method is based on a ray casting image overlap calculation method.
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